So yeah, she doesn't particularly like white people, and the speech which led to her resignation was mostly a description of how she came to move beyond that. When the edited snipped first appeared on Big Government I could tell immediately that she'd been cut off in the middle of a thought. I wondered if that thought was going to lead someplace into the light. The Anchoress, ever the voice of reason, thought so, too. And, well...
Why yes, I will be using it every time...
And yes, Andrew Breitbart would have done well to wait for the full footage before he released what he had. And yes, Barack Obama would have done well to demonstrate the stiffness of spine that the good Lord gave a flatworm and await events before demanding her head (unless of course, he really did leave the decision to Vilsack, which doesn't reflect very much better on him). Last night, Left and Right were as one in saying that the raw deal was Sherrod's.
And then she started opening her mouth.
Given American history, I am the sort of fellow who considers it perfectly understandable for African-Americans of a certain age to distrust and dislike white people. Shirely Sherrod most certainly possesses that age and experience. But to forgive her resentment does not oblige me to call it something else. For a woman of her education to publicly call out Andrew Breitbart as nothing more than the ghost of Jefferson Davis not only gives the lie to her supposed conversion, but bespeaks a shocking ignorance of the rhetorical situation, an ignorance that strikes at the heart of what Breitbart was getting at.
African-American activists like to pretend that the souls of white folk are theirs for the reading, that they know our deepest motivations better than we do ourselves. They've made mountains of racism out of molehills of speech for a long few decades. That they should feel the need to do this, after the horrible experiences of African-Americans, should surprise no one. But the expectation that I or Andrew Breitbart or Rush Limbaugh or anyone else should be bound to it, that raises an eyebrow.
It may take another hundred years before African-Americans have fully achieved what their ancestors labored so cruelly, suffered so miserably, to attain. Halley's Comet may return before the ancestral memories of fear, mistrust, and righteous anger become just memories. Charity and forgiveness alone may accelerate this process.
In the meantime, expect many people of many colors to vomit up the words that others attempt to put in their mouths.
African-American activists like to pretend that the souls of white folk are theirs for the reading, that they know our deepest motivations better than we do ourselves. They've made mountains of racism out of molehills of speech for a long few decades. That they should feel the need to do this, after the horrible experiences of African-Americans, should surprise no one. But the expectation that I or Andrew Breitbart or Rush Limbaugh or anyone else should be bound to it, that raises an eyebrow.
It may take another hundred years before African-Americans have fully achieved what their ancestors labored so cruelly, suffered so miserably, to attain. Halley's Comet may return before the ancestral memories of fear, mistrust, and righteous anger become just memories. Charity and forgiveness alone may accelerate this process.
In the meantime, expect many people of many colors to vomit up the words that others attempt to put in their mouths.
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